Updated: Want faster Internet? You may want to head east

If you want really fast Internet access in Houston, you don’t have many choices.

There’s AT&T’s DSL, which maxes out at 6 megabits a second, but only if you’re close enough to the central office (or a remote device called a DSLAM) to get it. Cable operator Comcast offers as much as 8 16 Mbps through its premium service, though most customers are in the 6 Mbps tier.

There are other, faster options, but you may not be able to get them if you don’t live in the right place. In today’s Computing column, I wrote about the faster, 10-Mbps DSL service available through AT&T’s U-verse service, but it’s not available everywhere. And if you happen to live in a newer suburb in the area, you may have access to Verizon’s super-fast FiOS connections, with speeds as high as 50 Mbps.

According to a new survey, if you want to be assured of getting a faster connection, the place to be apparently is on the East Coast. Specifically, you want to be in Rhode Island, where the median download speed is almost 6.77 Mbps.

Speed Matters, a broadband advocacy group that’s part of the Communication Workers of America, surveyed the ISP landscape this year and last and came up with rankings for states with the fastest Internet access. In this chart (PDF), Texas comes up in the middle of the pack, at No. 22. Eastern states dominate the top 5.

There’s a specific report for Texas (PDF), which shows its median download speed as 2.53 Mbps. That’s ahead of the overall U.S. median of 2.35 Mbps, but well behind other countries. No. 1 Japan, for example, comes in at 63.6 Mbps; France is No. 4 at 17.6 Mbps and Canada is No. 8 at 7.6 Mpbs.

Want more detail? In an interactive map on this page, you can drill down to Harris County (2.3 Mbps) and even to individual ZIP codes.

There are some caveats for this data. The state rankings are based on speed tests conducted via the Speed Matters Web site. In other words, it’s far from a random, scientific sampling — those who participated had to find the site and choose to run the test. In smaller jurisdictions, the test numbers are relatively small. For example, in my ZIP code of 77006, only two people ran the test during the months covered by the study. As you can see in the image above, only 5 participated in 77070.

Nationally, 230,000 people ran the speed test between between May 2007 and May 2008.

In addition, I am not sure how accurate the text widget is. When I tested my Comcast 6 Mbps connection, it came up at over 25 Mbps! Even with Comcast’s PowerBoost feature — which temporarily kicks my connection as high as 10 Mbps — it shouldn’t register that high. My upload speed was a more realistic 821 kbps (PowerBoost works for uploading, too).

You can test your own speed. I’ve embedded the Speed Matters widget in this blog post. Leave your results in the comments.

Update: It turns out the 25 Mbps speed I got from the Speed Matters widget wasn’t a mistake. Apparently, there are times when I actually am getting that kind of download speed from my "modest" 6 Mbps Comcast service.

As I mentioned, Comcast has a feature called PowerBoost that temporarily improves your download or upload speeds, usually for about the first 10 megabytes of data. Comcast spokesman Ray Purser said the company advertises that PowerBoost provides an 8 12 Mbps jump, but that’s a "sustained" speed. It actually can be a lot more, depending on network traffic.

I was able to duplicate the higher speeds at other speed test sites, and at one point I got close to 30 Mbps! I also noticed several other Comcast customers reporting similar speeds in the comments.

Because these speeds are temporary, it raises another question about the Speed Matters methodology. The numbers it is gathering from Comcast customers with PowerBoost may not be indicative of what those customers usually experience.

Also, a correction: Comcast last month doubled the speed of its premium residential service, now called Blast, from 8 to 16 Mbps. The original entry has been changed to reflect the higher speed.

34 Responses

Where I work, the above widget records 9182 down, 8394 up. This is comparable to the measurement at http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/ using the NY server: 8061 down, 7171 up. If you select the Dallas server on the Speakeasy site, it’s 13954 down, 10455 up. Choose your server carefully.

My Comcst connection looks to be ~12 Mbps down (during PowerBoost) and 2.5 Mbps up. Rally it’s an 8 down, 2up connection, but those are the stats. Need to upgrade my router to N; PowerBoost can, for short periods of time, saturate the cable node’s free space” so 25 Mbps isn’t unheard-of.

Last month I was surprised when a large download was at over 2300 kBps on our Verizon FIOS up here in Plano. That kilo-bytes per second.

Running speed test reports over 20 mbps (million bits per second) download with 5 mbps upload. We had the cheap, er inexpensive, 5 mpbs down with 2 mbps up. BUt, it seems like there was an upgrade when we combined our phone and Internet service at about a $20 per month savings.

As a resident of the great area we know as (northern) New England, I have Fairpoint (formerly Verizon) FIOS service. While connected to a server that can handle it, my downloads are a consistent 1.8MBps or ~15Mbps for about $40/month (+taxes/fees). This is soon to be updated to 20Mbps I am told and 50Mbps will be available at a premium (until everyone wants it – and it’s like the tele). Location…Location…Location…

I get 332kbps download and 109kbps upload out here in the 75936 zipcode. It’s DSL provided by a telephone cooperative for $49.95 per month. Not what you’d call good, but then for out in the boonies we at least can get it.

So if Comcast is boosting download speeds, why are they still capping Usenet downloads at 2 GB per month? What’s the difference between downloading a movie from alt.binaries.movies.divx and one via a torrent?

764/109 on one test and 1064/136 on another. This is a satellite connection from Blue Sky. Though it is not fast, it is very reliable and out in the country, there is no cable or dsl on the phone line.